I SEE that the German
prosecutors have decided to disregard the advice
of their toothsome Justice Minister Brigitte
Zypries (left) to charge our Catholic
Bishop Williamson
under their weird laws for the suppression of
free speech.

After all, his remarks were made in English,
for broadcast in Sweden; and the spectacle of
the extradition, arrest, trial, and imprisonment
by Germany of an English Bishop might have
proved a little raw for the rest of the world to
stomach. It would have aroused memories of
Germany's 1938 arrest and incarceration of
Pastor Martin Niemöller, yet another
turbulent priest in history.

WE POST our mail at Eton, and I have a coffee
with Jae after a stroll up Windsor High Street
and back. A weird incident follows as we leave
the coffee shop. Two women shopkeepers have
deliberately, as they now loudly boast, moved
their cars S465 CHT (Eton
Art Gallery) and P916 MLH
(The Beauty Room) to trap our little
Citroën in its parking bay. Their bumpers
are literally rammed up against ours, and our
little engine would hardly shift the
four-by-four Chelsea tractor behind or the car
in front by force. Verbal argument has no
effect.

Being only human, I deduce quietly that the
financial crisis is hitting them badly -- their
stores are empty of customers -- and the
innocent presence of a beautiful young blonde
has been the final straw for them.

"We're here until eight o'clock tonight, and
you can wait until then!" shrieks one, the
spitting image of the aforementioned Frau
Zypries; a post-menopausal bitch, as I rather
ungallantly advise her, still baffled, through
the open window upon driving away, having
finally had no choice but to phone the local
police to intervene. Hey-ho.

The
Tatler

IT ALL reminds me of two episodes in what I
might call our Rolls-Royce days in Duke Street.
In one, I returned from an outing to find that a
woman had parked on "my" spot facing my study
windows. A brief check confirmed that she had no
resident's permit, so I powered up the two
hundred and twenty horsepower of my 6.7 liter
V-8 engine and nudged her gently forwards off
the bay and onto the yellow line.

It turned out to be a great injustice. On
walking past, I found that she did have the
permit, but it had slid out of sight.
Distraught, I waited until an officer came to
affix the penalty on her.

"It was not this driver's fault," I said.
"There was this great big car -- not the Rolls
that's there now -- that pushed it off the
bay."

It was a White lie; the Black officer made a
note. "If the driver write us," she said, with a
broad smile, "we go cancel the ticket."

The next morning I saw from my study window
the afflicted driver, a young lady, puzzling
over the penalty ticket and scratching her head
-- how had her car ended up on a yellow line? I
ran downstairs, and told her about the big bad
car that had shoved her off the bay, and how I
had spoken to the officer, and what she had
said. "All you have to do is write them," I
concluded.

"You are such a gentleman," said the lady
gratefully. "There are not many who would have
gone to the trouble you did."

AND then there was the even more shameful affair
of the disabled-driver tag in the 1980s. I saw
one dangling from the front window of a large
car parked in our street, and a driver unloading
heavy cases from the rear. I stopped. Those blue
tags were a sore point with us all.

"You people get up my nose," I said. "You've
got a brother who's a doctor, or a sister who's
a nurse, or an uncle on the City council, and
you get these blue tags and park where you want:
on yellow lines, that's okay. But you also park
on our bays which we residents pay for, and then
we have to go on the yellow line and we get the
penalties."

"And why shouldn't I," he snarled at me,
putting down his heavy bags on the pavement.

"Why? Why? You're about as disabled as
I am," I retorted, pointing at the bags.

He reached down and rolled up both trousers
legs, to reveal not one, but two tin legs.

There was a sequel, undoubtedly well
deserved. A Daily Mirror gossip writer
routinely phoned me a few days later -- any
items in my life he could use for his column?
Time for penance, I thought, and I told him the
whole episode against myself, the story of the
man with the disabled tag.

Ah, the journaille! The next day, his
story duly appeared in the tabloid, but with an
unexpected twist:

"As I was walking in Mayfair," he began, "I
noticed David Irving across the street, shouting
at a crippled motorist "